Introducing the Piecaken

America continues to lead the way in food Inception with the turducken of desserts.

Photography: David Burke Fabrick

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Photography: David Burke Fabrick

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Published on 01 December 2015

by Tacey Rychter

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America may not be perfect. Sure, it has its flaws, like Fox News and Donald Trump. But if it’s possible to put delicious foods inside other delicious foods, goddamit, they’ll find a way.

While we’re still messing around with freakshakes in this hemisphere, our American counterparts have unveiled the piecaken: three types of pie baked into a cake.

According to the New York Times, the piecaken has been around for a few years now in underground dessert-eating circles. But the pie-hybrid went viral when a version of it, by the pastry chefs at David Burke Fabrick restaurant in New York, made the rounds on American daytime TV. It featured a particularly dreamy spiced poundcake stuffed with pumpkin pie, pecan pie and topped with upside-down apple pie. There’s also cinnamon buttercream slathered on top and oat streusel on the sides.

“Through the magic of butter, it all stays together,” Zac Young told the NYT. He’s an executive pastry chef for David Burke Group. "The thing takes about seven hours to make, and weighs eight pounds [3.6 kilograms]."

“Unlike in America, where a love of pie is in their DNA, demand for sweet pies in Australia is still not massive,” she tells Broadsheet. “I’m not 100 per cent sure if people in Melbourne would go crazy for a piecaken, but I would definitely give it a go.”

The Thanksgiving-inspired dessert falls into the Frankenstein meets Inception-style category of food. Its most famous ancestor is the “turducken”: a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, stuffed into a deboned turkey. The Corner Chicken Shop at the Queen Vic Market is actually taking orders for turduckens this year for Christmas.

“We’ve had 150 orders for this Christmas so far,” owner Olivia Gavriel says. “They’re easy to carve, and there’s no wastage, no bones to mess around with.” She says their turducken is becoming increasingly popular since they introduced it six years ago. The Corner Chicken Shop now offers home delivery.

We haven’t yet spotted any Melbourne bakers attempting the piecaken yet (the floor is yours), but if you’re keen to have a crack for Christmas, there’s actually an entire blog dedicated to piecaken recipes; including mini versions called cup-cakens.